4:48 Psychosis at the Young Vic (Fringe Review practice)

*** A focussed and static monologue performance of Sarah Kane's final play.

Troubled Sarah Kane wrote only five stage plays in her short life, and killed herself just after finishing this one: 4:48 Psychosis. Naturally, some have come to see it as a suicide note, especially passages about self-harm, depression and suicide. On the page, it can be a harrowing read, but the Young Vic's taut staging somehow misses the pain and torment that should drip from every word.

Anamaria Marinca, with director Christian Bendetti, take the script of 4:48 and turn it into a book-length acting audition speech. That works as a way of presenting both the text and a range of emotion under tight scrutiny. But it's a stripped-back performance that strips back a little too far, and loses all context for Kane's words.

The script itself is a tumult of many voices, competing to be heard and vying for attention. This is probably an aspect of some central character's mania – her psychosis – from which she is able to break free at 4:48am each day, until 6am. Marinca sometimes allows these voices to gabble along, almost rushing ahead of themselves, but always restraining them just enough to make every word perfectly clear – not a word is lost. At other times, she allows them space to breathe, to drip out as she pleases, or resisting as they force their way out against her will.

But she never moves an inch. She never strays from her allocated slot on the bare, wood-panelled stage – her biggest movements requiring only that she briefly raise a foot. Attention homes in on her pale face and wasted body, worringly thin and not wearing a bra. But any scope for movement or change from the sight of Marinca is mercilessly refused breathing space. Despite the open expanse of stage, this is a very constricted production. Even changes of lighting are limited to what feel like odd bits of playing about towards the end, included just so that the LX operator had something to do.

Marinca captures the anger of Kane's writing, but doesn't manage to give it a direction; it bleeds out all over the place, just as it seems her character should, but never does. It's not that power is lacking, just a form for it to take. There's no context to what's being said, and this production is almost just an opportunity to show that Marinca is capable of learning the entire script (which needn't be spoken by just one actor, but any number at all). There's none of the pain and anguish, nor the darkness, that Kane naturally contains.

If 4:48 is about anything, it's about self-hate and rejected love. Those are the causes of the underlying pain and anger in Kane's writing. Marinca and Bendetti have tried to show those two things with only one person on stage, and it just isn't enough. Those words exist in a vacuum.